Asus's Eee Pad 121 is landing in December or January, priced at a cool $1,000. It packs Windows 7 and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. (Source: Asus Tablet)

Also incoming is e-book reader and 10-inch Windows tablet

ASUSTeK
CEO Jerry Shen announced that
his company in March is launching a $399 10-inch tablet running on
Google's Android OS. The tablet will likely run Android
3.0 "Gingerbread" that is expected to be released
in March 2011.

Currently ASUSTeK has 800 software engineers
working with Android, so it has a great deal of experience with the
OS. Most of those engineers currently work in the smartphone
division, but ASUS is working to shuffle resources to prepare the new
device.

While the naming of that tablet remains up in the air,
ASUS did announce a name for a more pricey upcoming tablet.

In
December ASUS will ship the Eee
Pad 121 (EP121, for short) a $1,000 monster powered by an
Intel Core 2 Duo processor. The super tablet features a 12-inch
touchscreen and is driven by Microsoft's Windows 7 Home Premium
operating system. The approach is radically different than
Apple's best-selling
iPad, which features lower-end processing hardware and retails
for $499 in base form.

Shen comments, "If you want to
compete with the iPad, you have to do more than just be less
expensive. You have to offer more features. We want to spend
more time perfecting the [Eee Pad] before we launch. We're looking
more at Q1 to launch the devices."

Another 10-inch tablet
(not the Android one) is also incoming, utilizing an ARM processor
and Microsoft's Windows Embedded Compact 7 software. This model
should be closer to Apple's iPad in terms of form factor and will
also come at a similar price -- between $399 USD and $499 USD.

The
company also
announced plans to unleash a grayscale 8-inch e-reader,
priced at under $300. That device, dubbed the Eee Tablet, will
ship in October.

"If they're going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else." -- Microsoft Business Group President Jeff Raikes